


Sharing is Caring

by sabbig



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6234748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabbig/pseuds/sabbig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy is still figuring out where she might fit within Recon Squad Gladius. Luckily, Haylen is more perceptive that she could ever have hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Where have you been?”

She looked up from wiping more ghoul gore from her helmet.

“Working. Searching”

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back.”

“I always will. I always plan on it.” She corrected. When Amy thought of what had gone wrong this time, though, she sighed and placed the helmet down on the armor stand, stepped out of her battered T-45 armor to try and work on the stuck actuator in the arm. “I didn’t even plan on being gone a week.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re back, Soldier. We have work to do.”

She sighed and put her screwdriver down on the tool cabinet harder than she intended.

“Sorry, sir.” She ground her teeth to try and silence the sound of Kellog’s voice spinning his own tale of woe. “Let me know what you need done, and I’ll make it happen.”

“If you need some time…”

“No. Just let me fix this… I’ll be ready to leave in an hour.”

“It will be dark in an hour, Knight.” The pleasure that she just barely sensed at her return disappeared instantly, and was covered by the dark suspicion in his voice, a drop in his eyebrows.

“That’s fine.”

“No, that’s a tactically poor decision. I need you to head out to a few locations for Haylen, and that involves going in with your eyes open and alert. Not tired and obstructed by darkness.”

“It’s fine.” She finally got the plating off the frame and sat it down to begin pulling the frayed wires that were shorting out and causing the actuators in the hand to only fire occasionally. “Sir. Or I’ll just leave now, sneak in, sneak out, and be back before the sun is up. I won’t even engage hostiles.”

“Unacceptable, Knight.”

Amy sighed.

“Okay. Yes, sir. What are your orders?”

“Finish what you need to do here, report inside the station to resupply and rest, and you _and_ I will leave in the morning. I’ll debrief you on what happened while you were away when you come inside.”

“Yes, sir.”

Amy watched him leave with prickles of dread traveling up her arms.

She knew she would hate this part. Danse truly did seem to care about his soldiers, but _damn_ , sometimes caring was the furthest thing from what she wanted.

There was no way she was going to get inside the Glowing Sea; her power armor didn’t even seem to have enough protection from bullets, let alone the radiation, and the one person she would have felt comfortable asking for help to retrieve information from this person hiding there… she was too terrified to speak to.

Nick’s kind, ruined face still blinked at her behind her eyelids at night when she tried to sleep.

Kellog’s greasy voice, and Nick’s face.

She hated that she had his memories floating around with her now, hated that he seemed to be lodged inside of Nick, too. The first person she’d met who was not only _willing_ to help, willing to just sit and listen and _understand_ , but who may have had an idea of what she’d lost in an _instant_ , and what had she done to him? Ruined him. Turned him into a diabolical, evil criminal.

Sure, Danse—Paladin Danse—had been willing to help her, place trust in her, provide her with resources and responsibilities like she hadn’t had in a long, long time, but he had a certain need of her as well. Nick was selfless, and she had no idea how she was going to pay back the debt she owed him.

And she still didn’t know how she would explain to her superior that her friend she kept leaving to work with was a synth. She sat down in the doorway to the small garage and lit a cigarette.

It was less than satisfying, it tasted more than a little like irradiated dust, but still, it stopped the shaking in her hands for the meanwhile at least.

Her armor was nearly fixed; she just had to replace the two wires and reattach the plates she’s remove to access them, but something kept her standing in the door with the last of the day’s sunlight streaming through crumbling buildings to warm her face.

It was reassuring, somehow, that even though her entire world had been destroyed, bombed, murdered and kidnapped that the sun still rose and set each day. It was reassuring that even though she had yet to find a pair of boots that fit her that people seemed warm and happy in Boston’s frigid air. She smiled, looking around at all of the fortifications that Gladius had moved into the old crumbling police station. She throbbed, thinking of Nate. It was reassuring that despite the desperation she saw on people’s faces everywhere that there was still an army fighting for the greater good, and folks who had discipline and dreams and honor.

By the time she realized that she was sobbing, her tears were growing frigid on her face. The cigarette had burned down to ashes in her hand and there was nothing left.

She fished another out of the crumpled pack in her pocket and lit it.

She stood up to close the garage door and turn on the small nuclear heater hanging from the ceiling. And also, Haylen was standing in the doorway.

Amy briefly considered ignoring the Scribe and turning back to face the clattering garage door as it shut. She realized that realistically, though, it would be more awkward that she hadn’t turned around wiping gratuitous amounts of snot from her face and stared at the woman for a solid ten seconds before turning bright red and spinning to face the opposite direction.

So… she just said;

“Hey.” And ran her sleeve over her snotty face again.

“Hey.” Haylen replied.

Amy wished she could have called it a normal interaction… but the Scribe’s eyes were worried, her delicate eyebrows narrowed.

“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay.” She said softly.

“That’s good.” Amy replied. Her voice was way higher than it should have been.

“But…” Haylen stepped a little closer. “I did find a bottle of wine that I didn’t share with the boys.” Amy appreciated that the other woman finally broke eye contact and glanced down at the greasy floor. “And I will ask if you’d like to share it with me.”

“Oh!” Amy laughed again, and wedged her cigarette between her lips to wipe her eyes again, finally feeling dry skin underneath her fingertips. “Oh, that’s—okay.” She laughed, and stepped back, unsure of what to do with her hands. “That’s—thank you.”

“I’ll be right back.” Haylen said, and she slipped back out of the door.

 

Amy sat down on the mostly empty toolbench and tried to finish the second cigarette of the night.

When Haylen returned, again, she didn’t even hear the door shut.

“You should probably just stop lighting those until you figure out how to smoke them.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve been smoking them since before you were born.” She stuck the last inch or so of the cigarette back in her mouth. Where did the time keep going?

“Really?” Haylen sat the bottle and two mostly intact coffee mugs down on the tool bench beside her. “I kind of figured Danse was just spinning tales when he said you were pre-war.”

“He knows how to do that?” Amy asked skeptically. The thought of drinking wine from coffee cups reminded her fondly of her college roommate, and she laughed and reached for the wine bottle. The paper label had disappeared over the years, leaving only a dusty, cracked splotch on the dark glass.

“Once in a while he tells a good ghost story, too. You usually have to do something _really_ special to get him to tell stories, though.” Haylen said, producing a swiss army knife and flipping out the corkscrew.

“Well, I’ll try not to disappoint… although I know for a fact that this is the definition of disappointing in the military.”

“Yeah?” The other woman started opening the wine bottle, her mouth screwed into a crooked line.

“Yeah. I’ve been caught disobeying orders and drinking before.”

“You were military?” She looked up with an eyebrow cocked ascant.

“Once upon a time, yeah.”

“What was it like before the war?” Haylen asked as she poured them both lukewarm mugs of what would either be amazing or horrible wine.

“Well, before the war even started, it was very prestigious to have volunteered, that’s why I did it… afterwards…” She remembered the nights of terror, remembered a young Nate kissing her behind Humvees, disarming mines, dodging bullets, reading report after report of young men and women who would never see their families again, trying to figure out how to tell them that they’d fought and died for kin and country instead of endless and pointless consumption. There was a time when the words of patriotism fell flat and ashy on her tongue, though. “Afterwards, I was still glad to have made a difference, though.”

Haylen held out her mug, chipped rim and all. Amy clinked them together, and they sipped together.

The gag and sputter was mutual and in perfect unison.

Had Amy been watching it on a sitcom or a vid she would have laughed. As it was, experiencing the taste firsthand… she gagged and coughed first, and then laughed.

It lasted far longer than it should have, and when she finally stopped, she realized that not only were there tears on her face again, but that Haylen’s shoulder was propped up beneath her cheek.

By the time she looked up, and saw Danse standing at the doorway next, not only were her tears gone, but her sense of privacy was gone again, just like it was during her days in the army.

She laughed.

Amy _really_ laughed.

She picked up her and Haylen’s mugs both, and hopped off the bench, walked over to Danse.

“To you, sir.” She handed one to him.

She watched she skeptical expression cross his face and mentally cursed Haylen as she giggled and the paladin’s eyes flickered over to the Scribes face… but he still eventually took the mug from her hand and took a drink.

“Oh my god!” He immediately spit the spoilt wine back on the concrete garage floor.

Amy took a sip from her mug, just to be sure it really tasted as bad as she thought she remembered.

It did.

By the time she heard Haylen laughing at them from spitting on the floor, Amy felt… so much _lighter._

“By the steel, ladies.” Danse said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Next time you need something to drink, we have supplies that won’t kill you overnight, you know.”


	2. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, relevant note here, I’m actively headcannoning pretty hard that Nate was the lawyer and Amy was in the army.

“You know, sometime you should sit and actually talk to me.”

“I should. I know.” Amy nodded with the mug still in her hand.

“Or talk to Danse.”

Amy didn’t really have anything to say to that. She still hadn’t gone in to debrief with the Paladin, silently dreading telling him what had happened with Kellogg and Nick. Dreading the conversation about the fact that she couldn’t possibly take her next step without someone’s help… but she was loathe to ask the Brotherhood—she didn’t _want_ to ask him. Eventually she would analyze _why_ , but for now… Amy could do this alone.

She didn’t want help.

She just wanted to fix it, she just wanted Shaun back, and then that would be that.

“He’s not going to judge, whatever it is.”

Amy laughed.

“We’ll see about that. I don’t think I could fault him for it if he did.”

Haylen nodded and shivered.

“You should still talk to him. I promise, he seems like a hardass, but he’s the best commander I’ve worked for.” Haylen looked down at her boots. “He really does care about his people, takes responsibility.”

“If you think so.”

“I do.” The other woman smiled and grabbed Amy’s arm, dragged her towards the door. “Let’s go, Secrets.”

“They’re not secrets...” Amy said. “I just don’t want to think about it.”

“Well, either way, it’s time to get them out in the open.”

 

Amy was more than a little displeased with how _right_ Haylen was, and also _how_ Haylen was right.

Yeah, Danse sat and listened. And then he paced around. Then he asked questions. A lot of questions. He didn’t let her get away with her vague half answers like he had the first time they’d sat and talked right after Arc-Jet.

She was uncomfortable. She hadn’t told him that she’d been in the army before the war because… by the time she walked out of the vault she’d been a housewife for a solid year and a half. Pregnancy meant retirement in the middle of a war, and Nate had been the one who had insisted on it; not her. Amy loved the service, she loved the person it had made her into, determined, honest, driven, and tough. After a week at home alone with no one but her belly to keep her company, she had missed her family—her unit—missed the structure.

As he paced the creaky wooden floor, Amy was suddenly struck with guilt. It was the fact that her CO had essentially no idea who she was, where she came from, and that she had hidden it from him.

She remembered her old staff sergeant who had kicked her ass for lying about why she was late reporting back from leave once. Amy had made up some story about the coolant fill station being out of service and she couldn’t get her car back on the road to make report on time when really she’d just been unable to leave Nate’s bed. The tall, skinny lawyer she’d just met kept her wrapped up in the world of his ratty apartment _just_ too long, and of course she got stuck in traffic trying to get out of Jamaica Plains, and then again on 95, and halfway into the story Amy remembered that she couldn’t lie to save her life which was half of how she ended up in the service to begin with, and just stopped.

Sure, the ass-chewing hurt, sure, the report had set her back a few promotions, but in the long run it ended up setting the rest of her career straight. She set ground rules with the lawyer about her commitment to her career, he agreed, empathized, and _apologized._ Amy was promoted to a power armor unit assigned to Anchorage.

It seems some lessons take a long time to learn. Some even took her two hundred and some odd years.

Now, Amy was dreading looking up at him wearing that shiny, well painted T-60 set he had.

So when Haylen shoved her into an office in the police station, and the Paladin was just clomping around in regular boots instead of three hundred pounds of steel, she was less relieved than she had hoped. She briefly considered lying; inventing a story of capture and escape.

She could make it believable; she had enough material these days.

But it hurt. They had placed trust in her. She couldn’t do that. She looked at his dark, heavy brows, and her guilt felt like a physical thing.

“What’s the problem, soldier?” He began, setting down his rifle on the battered desk. His arms looked nice in that jumpsuit. So did his shoulders… and chest… oh no.

Amy made a point of not looking at him. She had to take that guilt and lay it down; she’d never be able to move on otherwise.

“Sir?”

“Our initial time-frame called for you being gone less than a week. You return three weeks later, your armor’s shot to shit, you _look like_ shit, and you’re already attempting to get yourself another solo mission into hostile territory with zero rest time in between?”

“A lot happened.” She responded quietly. “I had to make some decisions while I was gone.”  

“You didn’t want any backup? Any help? I know there’s not many of us, but Rhys is back on his feet, Haylen _clearly_ gets you, and I _said_ I would help you.” Despite his tone, the crease that formed in his forehead spoke more of disappointment than actual anger.

That may have been more devastating.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures?” She offered.

It tasted ashy and pathetic as soon as it left her mouth though, and she instantly wished she could suck the words back in.

The deep cant of his eyebrows didn’t change.

Jesus, if she had learned anything in her time it was that actions spoke infinitely louder than words, and nothing she’d told these people was good. If desperate times did call for desperate measures… maybe she’d have to actually trust someone for once.

“I know you’re busy, sir, but this might be a long story. How much of my history do you want?” She asked.

He considered her for a moment, and then shook his head and shrugged.

“I guess I’m going to have to ask for everything since you finally feel like talking.”

“What’s that mean?” She couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, you’re not exactly the average vault dweller, and you’re not a very good liar, either.” The feeling of warmth in her stomach seemed to have fairly little to do with the bad wine, and probably more to do with the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

_Shit_.

She sat down on the broken desk chair opposite him, and tried to figure out where to start. This was not going to be as easy as talking to sweet, sassy, little Piper.

“I did come out of a vault.”

“I figured.” He sat down at the desk across from her.

“I went into the vault on October 23rd, 2077.” She couldn’t figure out quite how to follow that up…

From what she could tell, he didn’t look like he wanted to immediately accuse her of lying, so, she tried to figure out where to go next.

“I… I got a place in the vault because I served in the army. I was part of a Power Armor division that fought in a few different places, but when I retired we had just helped win back Anchorage. Alaska?”

“You learned how to use power armor _before_ the Great War?” His head was now tilted down, _there_ was the disbelief she was expecting. She nodded, though, and answered.

“Yes, sir. I first trained in some old as dirt surplus T-38s from police actions in Mexico. The T-45s had a lot more finesse to them, though.”

“Incredible.”

“I got to test a prototype once. It was something they were developing to replace the T-45s, but before the 51s.”

“How did they—“ He shook his head and held up a hand. “While I really want to ask you more questions about that at a later time—and I’m sure several of our scribes will as well—how did you end up here, now? And not a ghoul?” The way he said the word left her with a few questions.

“The vault I was in… They… froze us? I didn’t know that cryogenic freezing was something science was capable of, but I guess that Vault-Tec had their secrets just like every other corporation.”

“You have no idea. The technology they had was used to harm mankind recklessly.” He nodded, but something about it felt more patronizing than genuine.

“Yeah. I was frozen. My husband had… our baby.”

“Why are they not with you?” He asked, but then she saw his face go a bit slack “That’s who you’re looking for?”

“Yeah. They’re dead.” This was the part Amy dreaded. “Well, Nate’s… dead. I just found out that Shaun is… maybe he isn’t. I don’t know if I believe that or not, yet.” She didn’t expect the tears that welled up behind her throat. As soon as she was able to swallow them back, she explained. “Shaun is my… my baby’s name.”  

“Wow. I’m… I’m sorry. I had no idea.” He got up from the desk and came back with a label-less bottle and two actually intact glasses. “Here.” He said quietly. “I can guarantee this is better than what Haylen tried to give you.” She smiled appreciatively and poured for them.

The whiskey was good. It burned, but that was good too. As she poured another two fingers for herself he gestured back at her again.

“Okay, back up. Why did you _think_ they were dead? What happened?”

She explained what she saw from the cryo-pod. What she’d learned about the Institute and how they terrorized what was left of her home—of the city. What she knew about Nate—what she couldn’t unsee, down in that vault, and what she’d assumed about Shaun.

“Everyone says that when the take someone, they’re gone. So I thought for a long time, they were _both_ gone. And that was it. After I got out, I spent some time working for the Minutemen. My friend Preston—he was the one with me when I first met you all—helped me a lot. He helped me get to Diamond City. He’s good people. It helped.” She sighed. “This is where it gets more complicated.”

He nodded, and leaned back to pat down his pockets, coming up with only a lighter. She reached into the pocket in her flannel shirt and offered her crumpled pack of stale cigarettes.

“Thanks.” He nodded and took one to light.

“No problem.” She lit one herself after he handed the pack back. She instantly regretted it, because she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking long enough to actually light the damn thing.

He reached over, took it and lit it for her.

“Thanks.” This was too different from any conversation she’d had with a commanding officer in the army before. She’d never sat down with whiskey and cigarettes. She’d never gotten chewed out with what felt like quite this much empathy. She’d never felt this disappointment in the world. She’d never felt this raw and dry and _used up_ before.

“I met this detective in Diamond City. He helps people find their loved ones. Sometimes it’s the Institute, sometimes it’s just raiders or mutants, or… just shit that happens to people.” She took a deep breath and tried to swallow the burning in her throat that had nothing to do with the one shot of whiskey she’d downed. “Well, we asked some questions, poked around, and it turns out the Institute has my son.”

“How did you find that out? _What_ did you find?”

“We found the house of the man who took him; some sort of mercenary who does their dirty work. We found people who’d seen them.” She stopped and looked up at him. She couldn’t read his face, but… “You know my baby is _ten?_ ” She breathed out, scratched a fist into her eye sockets. None of the tears had actually fallen, so she considered that a victory. “My first thought was, ‘I’m not _old enough_ to have a ten year old’. But then I remembered, what year is it?”

“2287.”

“Right. I skipped more than two centuries. I was an ice cube for ten more years before I thawed out.” She breathed. “This ten year old kid? What good am I to him? How am I supposed to teach him anything about _this_ world? I still remember the TV schedule from when I was on maternity leave. What do I have that’s useful?”

“Plenty, soldier. Children need parents.” Amy looked up at him. _Children need parents_. There was more behind that sentence that she wanted to ask him about, but for now, it rang true enough.

“Yeah. They do.” She ended up agreeing. “That’s what I ended up deciding. Anyways, what threw off my schedule, was that this man—his name was Kellogg—we found him.” She sat forward so she could fish something out of her back pocket and hand it to him. “I killed him. He told me that if I killed him I’d never see Shaun; at the time I thought he was bluffing. So I killed him, because _fuck him._ ” Amy wasn’t terribly proud of that, but… it was true. “I thought he was a synth at first, because of that, but he was just… just a shitty, sad man with a lot of metal in him. So, Nick and I found a doctor who could do something with it, and…” She leaned back and crossed one leg over the other.  “It’s got his memories in it.”

She swallowed again, remembering how Kellog’s own childhood, his own _parenthood_ were _fucked._ She took the sympathy she was unwilling to acknowledge for her husband’s killer and pushed it back down. “And it turns out Shaun’s alive. And there might be a way I can get into the Institute. But it’s hidden somewhere in the Glowing Sea.”

She sat back. Her cigarette was smoking just enough to remind her that a drag or two might help—or she could at least pretend that it would help.

The Paladin was quiet, his dark eyes fixed on the bit of metal and silicon she’d pried from Kellogg’s skull.

“Do you still want to find your son?”

 She laughed.

“Yes! Absolutely.” She sighed. “And no, not at all.” He only moved his gaze from the object in his hands up to her face. She put her hand over her stomach—there was an odd emptiness there, there and in here chest, right where people always said your heart lay. “I… physically need to find him. I _need_ to.” The emptiness she felt all over consumed her when something reminded her of his tiny chubby arms and the potential he held to be more than what she had been.

That’s when she finally realized her face was damp, wiped the tears away.

“But I also…” She wasn’t sure how to explain. “I also have no reason… I have _nothing_ better for him than running around through this _hell_ , fighting every single day, for _everything_ , and I have no reason to take him away from someplace where he is safe, where he has food and walls around him and people to take care of him. People he’s grown up with and considers family.

“I genuinely, desperately want the best for him, and I truly don’t know… if two hundred and ten years later, if I am the best thing for him anymore.”

The Paladin was quiet once more. The few tears she had shed would be all he would see. That would be all that there were. She didn’t know yet what she would do… but having made her report, she did actually feel better.

“I cannot imagine… what this must have been like for you.” He spoke slowly. She realized that he was actually trying to imagine it, and it made her laugh a little. It was so absurd; _she_ could barely comprehend it, and it was literally happening to her.

“However. I can absolutely tell you; the Institute… is out of control. They took him away from you, and they continue to take people from their families all the time with no right to do so. They create abominations of technology and science that endanger everything that mankind has left.  If we can still get to your son and get him out, then trying is the only option.”

Amy nodded. She liked the conviction he showed.

“And when I said that I could help you, I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t bluffing, just making promises so that you’d join us. The Brotherhood will take care of their own. We also have a larger mission against the Institute, so believe me when I say that I will help you, and when our reinforcements arrive, you’ll have the strength of steel at your back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Amy jumped as she processed the implications of what he had said.

“The transmitter—it worked?”

He smiled and nodded.

“It did. Thank you for your help.”

She really did like the way the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

She suddenly needed to leave.

She _couldn’t_ like the way this man’s _eyes_ looked; she couldn’t like the way his arms filled out his jumpsuit or the way power armor grease curved around his neck and wrists. She _couldn’t_ because Nate was dead and Shaun was… missing.

She stood up. She’d spend the night in that garage.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Initiate.”


End file.
